MODERN WICCAN CONCEPTS BASED IN LITERARY SATANISM
By: Diane Vera

As I pointed out to Warren Grant in the PAGAN echo recently, Charles G. Leland 
mentions Michelet in the Appendix to _Aradia:_ _Gospel_of_the_Witches_: "Now be 
it observed, that every leading point which forms the plot or centre of this 
_Vangel_  [...]  had been told or written out for me in fragments by Maddalena 
(not to mention other authorities), even as it had been chronicled by Horst or 
Michelet" (pp.101-102, 1974 Weiser paperback edition).
           
In _A_History_of_Witchcraft_, Jeffrey B. Russell writes: "Michelet's argument 
that witch-craft was a form of social protest was adapted later by Marxists; his 
argument that it was based on a fertility cult was adopted by anthropologists at 
the turn of the century, influenig Sir James Frazer's _Golden_Bough_, Jessie 
Weston's _From_Ritual_to_ Romance_, Magaret Murray's _Witch-
Cult_in_Western_Europe_, and indirectly T.S. Eliot's _The_Waste_Land_" 
(_A_History_of_Witchcraft_, p.133).

Russell states further: "Neopagan witchcraft has roots in the tradition of 
Michelet, who argued that European witchcraft was the survival of an ancient 
religion.  This idea influenced Sir James Frazer and a number of other 
anthropologists and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth 
centuries.  The publication of Charles Leland's _Aradia_ in 1899 was an 
important step in the evolution of the new religion of witchcraft.   [...]   The 
doctrines and practices of the witches as reported by Leland are a melange of 
sorcery, medieval heresy, witch-craze concepts, and political radicalism, and 
Leland reports ingenuously that this is just what he expected, since it fitted 
with what he had read in Michelet" (Russell, p.148).
           
As far as I know, it's possible that Michelet's influence on Gardner was only 
indirect, via the other above-named writers.  This would not invalidate my 
point, which is that Michelet played a key role in the development of the ideas 
in question.

Michelet has had a more direct influence on feminist Goddess religion than on 
Wicca proper.  Michelet's _La_Sorciere_(_Satanism_and_Witchcraft_) is listed in 
the bibliography of _Woman,_Church,_and_State_ by Matilda Gage (19th-century 
Women's          Suffrage leader and the founder of pre-Wiccan feminist Goddess 
religion) and, more recently, in 
_Witches,_Midwives,_and_Nurses:_A_History_of_Women_Healers_ by Barbara 
Ehrenreich and Dierdre English (1973).
           
In my opinion, Michelet's most important contribution to both Wicca and feminist 
Goddess religion was that, as far as I know, he was the first well-known writer 
(in recent centuries, anyway) to use the word "Witch" (capital W) with its 
present-day positive connotations of healing and opposition to tyranny.